06

By the end of the day, I was completely stressed and mentally drained. I seriously needed to go to the Riviera Club and relieve myself, but I was not going that night. There was so much on my mind, and I needed to be fully focused so that nothing went wrong. The slightest slip could disrupt the completion of my plans. 

Arnaldo was a cretin, but he was not a fool. Like me, he also knew how to play dirty, and he did it with mastery.

As I was leaving the precarious building, heading towards the parking lot, I was approached by two women on the sidewalk, one middle-aged and the other a teenager.

The same one I almost ran over some time ago...

"Mr. Athos, I am Selena Anderson. I need to speak to you, and it is urgent," said the older woman, heading my way, irritating me with her unbearable insistence.

She must have been the same one who had been looking for me for three days, whom I had left waiting, believing she was going to leave. But she did not. Apparently, she had spent the whole afternoon there waiting for me to come out.

"I am busy at the moment," I just said, trying to pass by. 

However, she practically jumped in front of me, trying to stop me from going further.

"My daughter is seventeen and expecting your child."

Her words made me freeze. I immediately turned to the two of them and focused my attention on the girl, who seemed to be hiding behind her mother, pale and scared like the other time I saw her.

"What did you say?" I asked, suspecting I had heard wrong.

"This is my daughter, Ryleena," she gestured toward the teenager. "You were at the Riviera Club together. She is expecting your child."

Hearing the mention of the club I frequented weekly since arriving in town, I jumped, wondering if there was any possibility that what this woman claimed was true. 

However, I took a good look at that girl and soon dismissed the hypothesis. I was a scoundrel of the worst kind, capable of any dirty trick to get what I wanted, and I was even proud of it, yet I wouldn't have engaged with a girl that age.

"Either you are crazy, or you approached the wrong guy. I never had anything to do with this girl."

"Yes, there was, two months ago, when she was at the club looking for her sister. She did not want to; she was practically forced by you, and we can prove it with a simple DNA test."

The woman spoke too confidently to be lying. Then I pulled back and remembered two months ago someone slipped LSD in my drink and I was practically out of touch for hours at the club. 

Until that moment, I had no idea who had drugged me, or for what purpose. I had even considered that it was some sort of set-up by Arnaldo, however, as nothing happened afterwards, I ended up putting the matter aside, but now I understood. 

That woman was certainly a scammer who had introduced the drug into my drink and induced me to have sex with her daughter, a child.

Stunned by the possibility, I again shifted my gaze to the girl, who was huddled behind her mother, looking like a scared little mouse. 

She was beautiful, as I had noticed the other time I saw her. She had huge, frightened, pale blue eyes, long, thick dark hair, pink skin like a doll's, but she was just a kid. I wouldn't fuck her... would I?

I remembered how she fainted when she recognized me on the street, the conversation we had in my car, when she said she knew me from the club and, just like now, she was completely terrified of my proximity.

For God! Did I really force her to do something?

"I would never do anything to a girl that age, unless I was heavily drugged ," I emphasized the accusatory tone of my words, letting her know that I was aware that she was the one who drugged me.

But the woman was not easily intimidated, she must have been used to applying this type of blow. He made a point of looking at me defiantly, saying:

“I do not know what kind of drugs you guys use there, or what you do there. What I do know is that my daughter is a minor and is expecting your child. She needs assistance and I hope I do not have to go to the press, or even the police, to have that assistance provided by you."

Like every crook, it was money she wanted. He was setting me up and he did it very well. I wouldn't invent a non-existent pregnancy knowing that a simple exam would disprove it. Probably, that girl was really expecting my child.

Holy crap! How did I allow something like this to happen?

The two had no idea who they were messing with. If they knew me even a little, they would know that trying to deceive me with a false accusation was the worst mistake they could make. I would crush bad characters for much less than that. Those were just two more that would be obliterated by me, reduced to dust.

"First of all, I need to know if you are telling the truth," I said firmly.

The woman opened her mouth to say something, probably claiming that she was willing to put the girl through a paternity test, but before she had the chance, I pulled my business card out of my pocket and interrupted her.

"This is my personal number. Send a message with your address. My driver will pick you up tomorrow morning so we can take the paternity test in the capital."

"I think you'd better show up anyway," she spat, and anger shot even more fiercely through my veins.

"I don't think you have the slightest idea who you are dealing with. Setting me up was the worst mistake you two ever made in your life."

The woman didn't even blink in reaction to my words. The girl, however, took a step back, looking terrified. Apparently, she was smarter than her mother, although not smart enough to stay out of my way.

"The only one at fault here was you, sir, for not being able to keep your dick away from my daughter."

I glanced at the girl again, who seemed about to run away, so terrified was she. I tried to imagine myself in bed with her, and although she was incredibly attractive in an almost disturbing way, I was pretty sure I wouldn't have sex with someone that age, even if I was on drugs.

There was more behind that story, perhaps Arnaldo's rotten finger. That's what I intended to find out.

"That's what we're going to see." To investigate further, I added, "Is Selena Anderson your name?"

"Selena Anderson Saint, memorize that name well, because you will hear it many times."

"I bet I will."

With that said, I turned my back on them and resumed my journey to the parking lot. 

As soon as I got in the car and started driving, I called Brendon, a hacker I paid to find out anything I wanted to know. I gave him the swindler's full name and told him to pass me any information he could find on her as quickly as possible, although in a city like this, where everyone knew each other and knew everything about each other's lives, I could gather important information through gossip. 

My head was still boiling with thoughts when I got to the house. It was the only environment in the entire city where there was even a modicum of refinement after I arranged for the building to be meticulously restored and redecorated. 

The main advantages of the place were that it was slightly away from the city and had high walls that prevented the approach of intruders. In addition, it had an immense land, which allowed the house to be surrounded by beautiful woods and gardens. 

If I had not prepared and left with my lawyers a dossier containing all the information that linked me to Arnaldo, the content of which would make him the prime suspect in case something happened to me, he would certainly have tried to eliminate me by now.

As soon as I entered the imposing house, the housekeeper came to receive me, as she did every day, asking what time dinner could be served. 

This time, instead of ordering it to be served in half an hour, I invited her to sit on one of the sofas and poured myself a shot of straight whiskey before settling down on the other.

"What do you know about Selena Anderson?" I went straight to the point, and the woman, thin and about fifty years old, wrinkled her nose when she heard Selena's name.

“She's a crook of the worst kind. She lives by scamming rich men, with the help of her daughters and a degenerate who is dating one of them."

I knew!

“It seems that this region is really a mine of scoundrels.

“Not all of them are bad. There are a lot of good people around here." Her gray eyes, crinkled, widened a little more. "Do not tell me they've set you up."

"They are trying. Looks like I am going to have to be the guy who puts an end to these infamous tricksters."

"I am sorry they set you up, sir." 

“They targeted the wrong man." I got up, placed the empty glass on the small table, and headed towards the stairs that led to the second floor. "Serve dinner in half an hour. I am going to take a bath."

After showering and having dinner, I settled into the office and called Brendon, requesting the results of his research, and he soon sent me a report with the information he had already collected.

Rose was right; those women really were first-rate criminals, the targets of several complaints in police stations in different cities. They committed crimes such as theft, extortion, embezzlement, ideological falsehood, vagrancy, and even aggression. 

Two things caught my attention. The first was that the name of the youngest daughter, Ryleena, never appeared among the complaints, certainly because she was a minor. The other thing was that the eldest daughter, Scarlet, had worked as a cleaner at my company's headquarters in SaintClair City for a while before disappearing suddenly after I saw her one night at the Riviera Club. 

It could not be a fucking coincidence.

I reflected on this fact, and at last, their whole scheme came clear in my mind. From the first day of work at the company, Scarlet had tried to seduce me, to get me into bed, presumably with the intention of getting pregnant. 

The night I got high on LSD at the Riviera, she was there, in the suite with me and Juliane, the girl I had been banging since I came to town. I did not remember even half of what happened that night, but without a doubt, it was Scarlet who slipped the drug into my drink. 

But why then was the youngest daughter pregnant?

Holy crap! 

Probably, I was so crazy with the effect of the drug and had sex with the girl without even realizing it, although I do not remember having seen her there, but I was out of my mind, I wouldn't remember if an elephant had entered the suite. 

Her mother said that I forced her when she went there to talk to her sister, she could be lying, but it could be true. There was no other explanation for Rylee getting pregnant other than Scarlet.

A thousand times holy shit!

The events of that night had become a blur in my mind. I only found out the reason for this the next day, after waking up almost in the middle of the day and having a blood test that showed the presence of the drug in my body.

I was pretty sure that girl was actually pregnant with my child; they wouldn't make up that story knowing that a simple exam could prove the opposite. 

And although the situation was disturbing, it no longer mattered so much how it happened, whether I forced her or if they used some form of artificial insemination with my sperm. The deed was done, and there was no going back, unless I forced her to have an abortion, which would be next to impossible given her age.

Most likely, I would become a father, and I had no idea what to do with a child. Fatherhood was not something that had ever been part of my plans. There was no room in my life for a child, especially one that was brought into existence by those infamous criminals in exchange for money.

My only certainty was that I would make them pay dearly for getting in my way, and I already knew exactly how. 

All I had to do was bribe the right people...